I'm writing this because I feel like liquid shit and it's three in the morning like usual. Getting it out somewhere feels better than sulking about it in my bed and pretending that the music of The Velvet Underground is melting my brain into the nothing I tell myself it deserves. You will get your puff piece soon. But right now, I need to expel all this fucking sin from my body. That's the best way I can put it: I feel like I'm filled with sin.
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I'm impossibly bothered by the thought I'm undesirable these days. Like, it weighs on me like a cinder block to the face. If you ever see me zone out mid call, and I mention some shit a few minutes after, like, "I just feel emo right now," nine times out of ten, it's because I feel undesirable. It bothers me more than it ever has, which I hate to admit because it feels like such a low-stakes thing to be plagued by. This is by no means my only problem, but it bothers me as if it is. I'm sure this is exasperated by an innately low self-esteem, being a couple of months post-breakup, and being within a circle of sexy, mingling young adults. But, fucking - I don't know.
It's a big part of why the whole "guy best friend" thing bothers me, and it's not for the reason I tell you. Truth be told: I secretly hope my friends like N----- or B---- have crushes on me. I would make my mess of feelings justified by virtue of them being shared. But I know for a fact they aren't in either case. No amount of mini golfing changes that. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I really suspect only like a 2% chance of that, but it's likely I'm alone in this. It's such a bitchy thing to get sad about because *I'm* the creep in this. I'm bitching about not getting validated for being a creep. And that's another thing: I feel like a fucking creep! These people are genuinely some of my best friends. I value them immensely as such, and I think I've made that very clear to them. I guess my near complete lack of interest in pursuing them probably revokes my status as creep, but it really only makes me feel like a non-offending creep. I'm still innately a creep, but one who has entered respectability via severe apparatuses of courtesy. A lion in a cage, as dumb as that sounds. I still think they're attractive. What you said about you having crushes on 80% of your guy friends at one point or another helped me a lot, though.
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I occasionally feel like I won't marry. It's bright and fucking early for me to be worrying about that, but my cousin - who is my age - is getting married in May. So is the one girl who asked me in high school. Et cetera, etc cetera. Most people I know are in roughly my boat of still having at least a decade of dating left in us, albeit with lengthier resumes, which is another thing. I feel like I'm starting way later than I should. I have no idea what that's in regard to. I guess it's because of other people? I feel like I'm at a high school level with this shit. I feel too behind to catch up. I don't even feel like I will because, again, I don't even feel desirable to begin with. I feel like the eternal fat, kind of funny, weird friend, forever in the background of cooler, smarter, and better people. I cannot imagine somebody thinking I'm cute. I wonder about it all the fucking time. I always try to see if I can catch it. But I've caught nothing. I catch a lot more for E---, which I probably secretly resent more than I let on to myself. And I mean, *look at bro*. Few are competing with that, least of which is me. I just wish I didn't feel so gross.
N---- told me a few weeks ago that "People like us can't casually date. We're too intense." I've had a suspicion for a while that I'll only fall in love once or twice in my life. I guess that's better than nothing. But it seems so easy and frequent for other people. J--- was (supposedly) in love every year on the year. I'm 21 years old and have never really asked anyone out. James Murphy was asked to write for Seinfeld at my age. I feel like such a fucking baby.
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Sometimes, when I was with J---, I would cry randomly. Like, they'd pick me up, all skirt-with-thrifted-striped-emo-sweater-and-toque'd up, and I'd start crying. Or, we'd kiss all night, and they'd take me to the graveyard by the dog park, and get down on their knees and give me a Ring Pop, saying "Ta-da! May I have your hand?" Or even - and I'll never forget this - they were giving me their millionth speech about how hard it is for me to take initiative romantically, giving me pointers to help me get out of it like "You can just ask me 'I want to hold your hand,' 'I really want to kiss you right now,' 'Can I go on a date with you?'" Having typed that, I'm crying just as I did when I heard it. I realized in those moments that I fundamentally thought of myself as unlovable, and it was being demonstrated to me that that wasn't true. Yet I still don't believe it, given how fucking up in smoke everything went. I have a self to work out before I can seriously commit to someone else. I clearly have issues. But, like, fuck, man.
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I'm really jealous of E---. It doesn't make me hate him, though. Not by a long shot. It makes me fucking hate myself. He does everything I do, but he's thousands of times smarter, cooler, sharper, more sauve, more erudite, less spastic, more moral, more likable, etc. I can't seem to beat the feeling I'm his dumber, uglier sidekick, which I don't feel like he's entirely denied, even when that specific comment got him to say "That at least proves you're more clever than I am." He's really sick of my self-loathing, though. He calls me on it all the time. I just can't seem to beat it out of me. I'm afraid I'll die this way; my entire life spent bitching about the flesh I can't exist outside of. E--- is further along in a lot of his faculties than I am, despite being a year younger than me. I mean that in the sense that he's significantly more well-spoken, more erudite, more charismatic, more efficient, and more moral than I am. He runs a much tighter ship than I do. I guess I just got to get good and stop comparing myself to him.
One time, he told me that "If you were as astute you are when you're being cruel to yourself, you'd be fine" (1). I think about that all the time. The whole Gang seems to notice how much I hate myself. It seems to be a concern among everyone, particularly J---, E---, and N----. That alone makes me not want to hate myself. I can't be that bad if you guys (and by 'you guys,' you're included, Madison) care about me that much. N----- seems to feel the same way about herself, that this group helps her not hate herself. She tells me occasionay that "Our belief in each other undoes the disbelief in ourselves," which is my favourite thing she's ever said, and also where the title of the last post comes from because it's a bastardized Anne Sexton line. She's right, even if I almost want her to be wrong and for me to jump into the North Saskatchewan(2) and drown and freeze to death. Not only is she right, but this is bigger than me. The fact that anyone would tell me that me and my friends would make them feel like they belong somewhere for the first time in their lives is enough for me to cut the bullshit. This ought to be protected with my life.
(1) He told me this when we were writing that John Maus seminar, and I gave him one of the worst first drafts I've ever barely wrote, and I immediately clocked it for it being bad. I was lamenting my lack of writing chops, and he hit me with that.
(2) The North Saskatchewan is the big river that runs through the heart of Edmonton. I figure I should note that because I mention it all the time.
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I feel such horrendous guilt about how I was during my relationship with J---. Our relationship isn't the only relationship I dragged through the gutter (although ours was without question one of its two actual casualties). Talking to you, E---, and B---- about it gave me the billionth opportunity that day to feel like shit about it. I'm shocked that I let any of that happen. It makes me really, really scared of what else I think I'm not capable of. It basically seals the deal on my feelings of undesirability: the closest I got to feeling desired, I blew it on all fronts, so even if I can be desired, I don't deserve it. For the sake of the people I care about the most, I ought to be living just beside them. I feel that I have a very clear line I ought to never cross. But that's bullshit, and I know it. I think.
Fuck, I should go easier on myself.
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Sometimes I'll lay in my bed on nights like these and blast - and I mean fucking blast, volume cranked all the way up - "Heroin" by The Velvet Underground. I'll pretend it's so loud it's hurting me, especially when the song explodes at the end and Lou Reed is shouting about dead bodies and not caring anymore and John Cale is going nuts on the electric viola. I'll pretend it's the fire I deserve to burn in, yet I always imagine myself scared like a kid in it.
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Robbie is Cree. They were telling me that a relatively unknown Cree lifeway (which is basically a custom) outside of Cree circles is that the northern lights are spirits. Seeing them means the dead are out for a jaunt, so photographing or even so much as looking at them is a massive, bad luck-inducing kind of disrespect. It's a lot like how Allah can't be represented in Islam. This, of course, freaked my emo, superstitious ass out.
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Occasionally, I'll torture myself thinking about all the shit J--- must say about me to their supposed new friends, being that I'm the latest in their canon of shitty ex-boyfriends. Anyone who has met your parents and has been naked with you while you both sobbed into each other knows enough about you to really do tricks with their shit-talk.
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I'm so tired of my Seven Years of Bad Luck. I want a Golden Age.
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On a lighter note, I care about myself. I can't just treat myself as a thing I have to abuse indiscriminately. My life is valuable, and I'm not done for.
